Substituting the Desert:

Keywords: militarism, desert, history, historical preservation
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

During World War II, the California desert stood in for North Africa as General Patton conducted war games that sought to integrate the ground and air forces in conditions that were supposed to mirror the Maghreb. The Desert Training Center (DTC), though short-lived, is one of several projects in which the California desert stands in for other arid environments, from the date cultivation the Coachella Valley that recalled the Middle East to the contemporary expansion of the military bases that make training grounds for the Global War on Terror. Yet, unlike projects of improving or transforming the desert through planting date palms or creating contemporary military bases, the DTC was imagined to be impermanent, as if it would have no effect on vast wasteland. The assumption that the desert couldn't be impacted by a massive military operation, however, were later proven to be unfounded, as the ecological legacies of the DTC persist even as the memories of the project have faded.

Drawing on ethnographic and historical work on the Desert Training Center and ongoing efforts to protect military legacies in the California desert, I examine the legacies of the DTC today, focusing specifically on the contradictions between the planned impermanence of the project and the legacies that it has for desert conservation projects.